Tuning

Although Elasto Mania is 99% about skill, having the bike act differently by changing hardware equipment or software settings can not be ignored.

History

It was noticed already back in 2000 that Elasto Mania worked differently on different computers. One of the best levels to notice it, was internal #45 - Sink. This was because Sink's first apple location had a small hole where left wheel had to be inserted. The wheel made weird small bouncy movement back and forth, some people got stuck there for a while (0,2s), while other's got out relatively fast.

When talking about a 0,2s advantage in one of the biggest höyling levels, people obviously became interested in what could cause the difference.

Later on it was noticed that changing monitor's refresh rate would affect the gameplay. The refresh rate itself was irrelevant, however when vertical synchronization was on, fps was synchronized to match the refresh rate. So, for example if you put the refresh rate to 85hz, the fps was 85. Note that the refresh rate must be set on the exact same resolution that is being used in Elasto Mania to see the effect.

Accordingly, when vsync was turned off, the fps raised to maximum possible depending on hardware. Typically this meant 200fps back in 2000.

Frames per second

So, the conclusion is that everything in tuning comes down to fps. Everything else, vsync, refresh rate, hardware, software and so on, is only indirect tuning (because they affect fps!).

Low fps (30-200)

Differences to high fps:

• Long keypress delay. - There is a fix.
• Faster rotation. - It is very small difference, but still a difference.
• Wheels can enter holes that are smaller than the wheel.
• Unpredictable wheel behaviour in "\/" shaped vertex holes. - wheel could get sucked inside the polygon, or in another case a high speed bounce up in the air could occurr.
• 0,02 faster than high fps on a flat 10 second level. [why?]

It is important to note that the less fps there are the less predictable wheel behaviour is in tight holes.